The Median Is the Message

Slide 1 of 8

1/8

Jules Koch and his friend Lord Byron with works by Dan Colen in Montefiore Park, at Broadway and 137th Street. The pieces are part of the “Broadway Morey Boogie” exhibition presented by the Marlborough Chelsea gallery.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 1 of 8

1/8

Jules Koch and his friend Lord Byron with works by Dan Colen in Montefiore Park, at Broadway and 137th Street. The pieces are part of the “Broadway Morey Boogie” exhibition presented by the Marlborough Chelsea gallery.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 2 of 8

2/8

The works in the show, also sponsored by the Broadway Mall Association, are installed on the landscaped median stretching from Columbus Circle to Mitchel Square at 166th Street. The sculpture is by Mr. Colen.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 3 of 8

3/8

Max Levai, above, of Marlborough Chelsea, has organized the project, along with Pascal Spengemann, the gallery’s director.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 4 of 8

4/8

The artist Joanna Malinowska at a Bronx warehouse with her sculpture-in-progress, “Chronicles of the latter world.”

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 5 of 8

5/8

Matt Johnson’s “Hiroshima Buddha” is on display in Mitchel Square Park, near Broadway and 166th Street.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 6 of 8

6/8

The artist Davina Semo and her bunkerlike sculpture “Everything Is Permitted,” on display in the middle of Broadway at 117th Street.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 7 of 8

7/8

Lars-Erik Fisk, left, answers questions from a young crowd about his sculpture “Con Ed Ball,” which is installed on the median on Broadway at 79th Street.

CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

Slide 8 of 8

8/8

Lars-Erik Fisk inside “Con Ed Ball,” a sphere painted in the familiar colors of a Con Ed truck. The exhibition runs through February.

Looking like a cross between Pac-Man and a public utility vehicle, Lars-Erik Fisk’s artwork was dropped on the median strip at Broadway and 79th Street on Monday. A crane stood by as Mr. Fisk put the finishing touches on it, fielding nonstop questions from passers-by.

“What is it?” they asked.

“A Con Ed ball,” Mr. Fisk replied, as if that explained everything. It is, at least, the title of his piece.

Mr. Fisk continued detailing, adding lights and windows to his work, a sphere painted in the familiar turquoise, gray and white stripes of a Con Ed truck, with the company’s name encircling it. (The Consolidated Edison Company did not participate in the piece.)

“I prefer that it not necessarily be seen as an art object and invite a lot of confusion, and the best way to do that is in the public, where you’re not sure what you’re going to see,” said Mr. Fisk, an artist who was once the creative director for the jam band Phish. A little boy approached. “Did you make this all by yourself?” he wanted to know. Mr. Fisk smiled. “I had a little help,” he said.

Mr. Fisk’s art had a lot of help in its landing spot. It is part of “Broadway Morey Boogie,” an ambitious display of public art by a diverse array of artists that has been dropped up and down Broadway, at 10 sites from Columbus Circle to 166th Street. Organized by the Marlborough Chelsea gallery, a commercial venture, with the help of the nonprofit Broadway Mall Association and the city’s Parks Department, it is intended as a 10-artist group show, the first along Broadway, where public exhibitions are usually devoted to a single artist.

It is also a far-reaching launching pad for the gallery, started two years ago by Max Levai, 26, Pierre Levai’s son. Pierre, a veteran art dealer and patriarch of the international Marlborough chain, helped inaugurate the Broadway art corridor in 2004 by underwriting an exhibition by the sculptor Tom Otterness; a decade on, Max is stepping into his father’s footsteps with this show, which opens on Wednesday and runs through February.

Creating “Broadway Morey Boogie” over two years was “a huge responsibility, and a very important one for me personally,” the younger Mr. Levai said. Growing up on 28th Street near Fifth Avenue, he visited Chelsea galleries often and began working at his father’s flagship space on 57th Street when he was 22. Simultaneously opening his downtown gallery and envisioning this exhibition, he didn’t want to squander the family’s reputation or his good fortune. His father offered support but was largely hands-off.

“A show of many artists, which have a different vocabulary of expression, by definition is difficult,” Pierre Levai said in his French-accented English. “I was very happy not to get involved in it.”

With his gallery director, Pascal Spengemann, Max Levai handpicked the artists — all Americans, mostly younger and midcareer, some making their public debut. A few pieces are site-specific, and many are in a larger scale or a different material from what those artists have worked in before. Not all are represented by Marlborough Chelsea. “To make a statement,” Mr. Levai said, they wanted to collaborate with other artists and galleries.

The exhibition’s title is a play on Piet Mondrian’s 1943 painting “Broadway Boogie Woogie.” The Morey reference is to Tom Morey, the surfing pioneer who created the Morey boogie board.

“We were envisioning a map where you were, like, surfing down Broadway, and all these really engaging things were popping up,” Mr. Spengemann said. “The emphasis was on fun.”

So there, on Columbus Circle, is a 15-foot-tall, two-and-a-half-ton concrete bear, a camera slung around his neck, like a Central Park tourist. Called “Chronicle of the latter world” and inspired partly by a roadside sculpture in the Yukon, it’s by the Polish-born, Brooklyn-based artist Joanna Malinowska, 42. It was her first time sculpting in concrete, and her first sanctioned public art piece, “with a proper set of permits,” Ms. Malinowska said, as she surveyed the work in progress. “I’m nervous. I hope it doesn’t kill anybody.” (Never fear: Copious safety checks and insurance are required.)

Drew Heitzler, from Venice Beach, Calif., imported a 25-foot black rubber palm tree to the leafy median at Broadway and 157th Street. His tree is pockmarked with staples, as if it once held “Missing” fliers. Its underlying message relates to oil production, railroad barons and Los Angeles noir.

“I hope that people wonder why it’s there, and maybe that will lead them to investigate it,” said Mr. Heitzler, 42, who has a related show, “Paradies Amerika,” at Marlborough Chelsea.

Some installations invite interaction, like the skate ramp boulders painted to look like M&Ms, by Dan Colen, at Broadway and 137th Street. And some have more oblique messages, like “Everything Is Permitted,” Davina Semo’s concrete-bunker-like building across from Barnard College, at Broadway and 117th Street. “I don’t know if this looks like a sculpture,” said Ms. Semo, 32. “I’m very excited to see what happens to it.”

Sometimes, pieces were rejected. Parks Department officials thought better of putting Tony Matelli’s “Sleepwalker,” a realistic sculpture of a nearly naked man, by the subway steps at Broadway and 73rd Street. The piece recently caused a debate on the Wellesley campus in Massachusetts, where students protested it as stalkerlike. Mr. Matelli is now represented by “Stray Dog,” which is also on view at MetroTech Commons in Brooklyn.

As with all public art, the relationship with the community can be fraught; looking over Mr. Colen’s work in Hamilton Heights, one neighborhood resident grumbled that the area needed jobs, not art. Harriet F. Senie, a professor at City College and a scholar of public art, wondered about the conceptual angles.“The title of this exhibition — that’s not going to be meaningful to a non-art audience,” she said. Context, accessibility and dialogue have to be considered, alongside creativity, to make truly populist art, she said. “I hope that will be the outcome here.”

The works will be presented with a hashtag (#Bwaymoreyboogie) and a number to call for a recording about each piece, said Deborah C. Foord, chairwoman of the Broadway Mall Association’s public art committee. “We’re also interested in stretching people a little bit,” enticing them to traverse the avenue for high-minded work, she said.

The gallery also hopes to sell the pieces; Mr. Fisk’s “Con Ed Ball,” for which the gallery paid about half of the $20,000 production costs, is $125,000, said Mr. Fisk, who is also the studio and facilities manager at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens. He spent hours on Monday explaining the piece.

“It’s more just something you play with, with your imagination,” Max Levai advised a child. as he surveyed the installation eagerly. “It takes awhile for it to all sink in,” he said.

And Pierre Levai, watching the exhibition finally unfold, pronounced himself proud. “Most as an art dealer than a father,” he said. “As a father, it’s like the strawberry in a very good cake.”